I just heard about a party called "CEOs and Secretaries." The women come as secretaries, the men as CEOs.

That is one of the most degrading things I've ever heard of. Unless it is done in the most ironic way possible, it reinforces and serves as a visual statement of male-domination. I don't care about "Pimps and Ho's" parties because 1) there is a power to be had in sexual liberation, 2) it's entirely escapist and not relevant to the partiers' daily lives, and 3) there is not a real power hierarchy expressed and reinforced by it.

"CEOs and Secretaries," however, reinforces the subjugation of women as servants to males. There is no agency in being a secretary. You exist to serve the (male) CEO. I cannot believe that the girls at the school it happened at didn't say, "What the h*ll? I am not a secretary. I am not about to play around at being some guy's lap dog."

This is not meant as an attack on secretaries, fyi. It's an attack on the notion that being a secretary is a female position and being a CEO a male one. We need to move beyond gender and stop excluding people from power because of their gender.

For some reason, nothing gets me more upset than gender-based discrimination. Race-based stuff gets me, along with sexual orientation stuff and religious stuff and all of those other identity characteristics American society has determined to be important, but gender gets me the most.